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It’s your favourite day of the week! Well, mine that is… It’s Reverse the ‘Verse!

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

2.2 PTU may or may not come out today with a meeting in the afternoon to decide. No features are confirmed yet, but on the list are as follows: Flyable ship: Sabre, Hangar ready ship: Xi’an Scout, Crusader Reputation system, New EVA system, Powerplant and coolers introduced, Crusader layout changes, many behind the scenes fixes

PTU invites will go in waves. Will Everett will make a post explaining the wave system.

Drake Interplanetary has two ships beginning development soon. You read that right, TWO. Buccaneer and Dragonfly, check the forums to see ideas of what it will be like.

RSI will be making the new corvette which currently has the name Polaris with a hull roughly 100-110 meters long.

Shields and more will be added to the component system hopefully in 2.3.

Star Citizen was featured on BBC’s “Click” as well as a Time Warner commercial, check those out.

HOTAS is currently undergoing discussion regarding quality and where the happy medium is.

No update on Prowler, Carrack, BMM, Reclaimer, Endeavour or Crucible.

Reliant is close still, just hooking everything up for it’s hangar ready state

Sabre and Xi’an scout will be for sale when both go live, not PTU.

No update on the lobby system at this time.

Starfarer is still being worked on, wont be in 2.2, stay tuned.

Full Transcript

Soon! TM

‘This is an audio test, do you hear the audio test?’

They are testing the audio. I hear Disco and Hennessy testing the audio. Hennessy says he wills crew it up somehow between now and the start of the show. 14:00 to start time.

They’re talking about mics. And testing handheld mics. And feedback. Because they’re fun. And Disco is doing this all in his most ‘I am a teacher’ voice ever.

Special guest this week is Sean Tracy

Final audio test being done now. Disco is testing things. Disco wants us to wave our hands at him, because he’s watching. CONFIRMED CIG have cameras in all our houses and are watching us. LOOK OUT!

Audio tests done, we’re now in the waiting game. Six minute countdown.

I see them. We have Ben, Alexis, Disco, and Justin.

They are live, and have audio, the audio test was successful!

It is Friday, February 19th, 2016. Reverse the ‘Verse!

‘This is Cloud Community Games’ weekly’… something wrong there Disco…

It’s time for the Week in Review!

2.2 is fervently at work. Many builds. Lots of work is going into it. Working on getting it releasable. They have a limited chance for tonight – might have a LOT of issues, only be pushed to a limited number of people, but there is a chance for it tonight.

This PTU patch is going back to the ‘wave’ system. Will Leverett will have a post on the forums later today explaining the ‘wave’ system, and how people get into it.

Jared tweeted a screenshot from Yesterday’s build yesterday, where all characters had meatballs around their bodies. There’ve been lots of issues with 2.2. Lots of known issues that they know how to fix. But there are new errors too. Updates to the patcher are causing some issues with the wave system, for example.

Ben got a scanner this week. He’s been scanning old Wing Commander documentation.

He scanned 2300 pages in the last 24 hours.

He’s been doing real work too. Two ship kickoffs. The Drake ‘Monarch’, that changed to the Corsair, and changed to the Buccaneer, which should be the final name. Lots of arguments about it, name’s too piratey, corsair’s a cool name, too ‘stupid’ that butterflies come from a Caterpillar etc…

Ben has just confirmed that they will be making the Dragonfly.

The Corvette will be RSI manufactured, tentative name is Polaris.

There’s a Buccaneer subforum in the ships thread, for fans to suggest images for reference

Did some work this week with Matt Sherman and Kirk Tomay on additions to the Voyager direct system. Getting ready to do the item revamp. First taste of that in 2.2. Coolers and power-plants will be introduced, and they’ll be in voyager direct.

Patch after that will have lots of things, shields and more in 2.3 etc…

Be able to effect the performance of ships with components for the first time.

New shields are replacing the old ones, but people who purchased old ones will get new ones. Some are staying exactly equal, some people get more shield for their dollar.

Did interviews this week for a new Community manager. They’re looking for marketing artists and more too. Copy editor etc…

Around the ‘Verse this week had a good section about DataForge this week. Technical, lots of how they’re converting from XML to Datablobs. ‘inside spaceball’ – Ben.

Ben was the original community manager, as was Pete mackay, James Pugh, Will Lewis. They need more than one.

Pete is a designer, Ben’s a Director. Disco is a community manager, and they need a second one.

Went to Toys R Us this week. Ben got nothing. Disco bought 60$ worth of crap.

Alexis had some meetings about merch and shipping. They’re looking into approving shipping. Because USPS sucks. International packages can no longer be tracked using USPS. Which sucks.

Implementing new tracking for various countries, so future merch shipments should have less issues. Also doing things for upcoming events; event swag and such.

Disco helped make the upcoming mousepad. Most of it was Gurmukh

The new Shield system involves several shields working at different levels. Starting with easy stuff so they can get swapping figured out, and then they’ll do shields next patch.

Justin is trying to find Hennessy a date, and trying to get him to get rid of his beard. Justin is insane. Beard face is best face.

Sandy is joining now.

And now, it’s Question Time!

[What sort of lighting set up in the studio?] Kino flow lights. 3 in front on boom stands, and one behind. Natural light replicating kino flow lights, similar to a TV studio.

They’ll use the same lights to get a high-res picture of the Wing Commander map CR has.

[Over Ketosis yet?] Disco’s in the thralls of it. So is Ben. They’ve been doing great though. Which is very exciting. Ben hasn’t cheated at all. Go Team!

[Buy glasses at Casaba?] What’ll be available in the first drop at Casaba is still being determined. LOTS of pants will be available though. No cargo pants though. Not sure what’ll be in the first drop, but if it’s not in the first, it’ll probably come.

[Star Trek watch-along?] They keep talking about wanting to do it. Last year they did all 6 star wars movies in a day. They’re doing it again tomorrow. They talked about Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc… They’ll watch whatever’s picked on a thread on the forums, in Off Topic. Probably start around 1 pm Pacific.

Movie, pizza, another movie, then end.

Hennessy wanted to watch Prada to Nada.

Justin has seen it.

Matt Sherman has now arrived.

They’re playing musical chairs to find Matt a place.

They’re talking about random small things, like Matt playing D&D with some fans, and Justin taking pictures of a dog.

The BBC Click episode has gone up since last RtV.

SC was featured on BBC Click, and an extended version was posted online. They think it was a good piece. Ben is flying the Wing Commander Hornet in the clip.

Bunch of Wing Commander retrospectives being done right now apparently.

Time Warner had a commercial featuring SC as well. Shot by a company from the East Coast.

The team shooting the commercial had a lot of fancy cameras.

They took three days to shoot 2 minutes of footage.

The commercial itself is pretty cool, great exposure for the game.

Not going to talk much about 2.2 features today, cause they’re in the other room locking it down right now.

Not everything’s working right now, but they know what they want to add and are working on getting it all stable for the PTU.

Lots of updates that we might not see. Patcher changes, data reporting changes. The EVA is in, addition of a reputation system, some layout changes to Crusader, flyable Sabre, hanger ready Xi’An Scout

PowerPlants and Coolers going in, which is huge. It’s the start to the new components system.

Hostility system should be interesting when it comes online. And there’s talk about new FPS weapons as well.

2.2, it’s what’s for dinner.

[Sabre for sale?] There’ll be a temporary sale for the Sabre and Scout when they go up live, not for the PTU. But the first wave of PTU folks might get a Sabre to test.

[loot or reward updates?] Not yet. That’ll come with REC and economy in Crusader. Persistence is a big part of that too.

[Can we purchase previous Sub rewards if we just became a sub?] Yes, you can.

Apparently there’s a Soviet Winnie the Pooh.

Right now Serenity and Starship Troopers are winning the votes to be watched tomorrow.

[Reliant?] Really cool. It’s getting ready and set up for hangar ready, not sure when that’ll be. But tune into 10 for the Devs on Monday, might learn some stuff about the Reliant.

Also 10 for the Devs hasn’t been shot yet, so it might be late. Scheduled to include Kirk Tomay, who’s hip-deep in the Scout.

[Char. Customization?] That’s in Austin. Forrest and Omar are working on that, as are the team in Austin. It’ll be cool when it’s in.

According to Disco, CIG are doing some things like Xcom’s character creator.

[Prowler?] No updates.

[(b)lobby system?] Diets are reducing the blobby system. No updates to the lobby system though, still being worked on.

[Starfarer?] Continues to look amazing. Won’t be in 2.2. But work continues on it. It’s a huge ship. It’ll be another ‘watershed’ moment for SC.

All the hallways and rooms in the Starfarer; if you think the Connie is detailed, the Starfarer’s a LOT bigger than a Connie. Should be fun.

The Starfarer is a ship that can’t MISC – Ben Lesnick, 2016.

[HOTAS] Going back and forth on quality. They’re not going to announce it until it’s where CIG want it, quality wise.

Joining them now is Sean Tracy.

2.2 updates! from Sean Tracy!

Sean Tracy talks fast, by the way.

2.2 – Player hostility stuff. There’ll be a big write up on it. Mostly gives a reputation system. Not a very granular system, but it’s the first iteration.

With the Reputation system, if someone’s griefing other players, they’ll go up in ‘red’ reputation to the point where a bounty will be put onto them. Not sure what players get for killing them, but they turn bright red, and become a mission. It’s a challenge, for people who get up there, and for people who go after them.

Lots of bugs have been fixed in regards to EVA – getting in and out of ships, transitioning to EVA, etc…

Tomato Man is giant replace-me balls. Simple sphere with one texture map saying replace me. They’ve wanted to convert mesh format for a while for most assets – in games and rendering, they use a certain floating point. On consoles you have to use 16 bit. On PC you can allow 32 bit for some assets. When it comes to an asset, the position of the vertices is accurate to 32 bit rather than 16.

If you convert 32 down to a lower bitrate you get quantization, which lowers the accuracy of the vert. Artists run it through render as 32, and the build process will crumple it down to 16. It’ll round the mesh down, which can destroy meshes. Artists spend so much time getting allt he verts done right, and they’re not happy when they see it in the build cause the assets don’t look as good.

Carson worked on a new mesh format that they want to support which is a flat integer 16, running all assets through that. But they’re ending up with errors. 300 some odd errors.

QA had to put a task for every one of those errors. They wanted to release with the issues, but they’ve got to fix them all. They’re all super easy fixes though, so that’s being worked on.

Gotta get those assets fixed. They might not get through all 300 by PTU, might be some missing assets in PTU.

New EVA system, when it’s working, you’ll know it as soon as you try it. Drastically different. Control method is completely different. Not animation controlled. Flies more like the ships, and is more unified to how the ships move.

UK audio team have redone thruster sounds for EVA as well. Everything’s parametrized. It’s not just one sound when you thrust, the sound, and the power of the thrust, adjust based on the amount of thrust you’re putting in.

[Procedural Generation?] Sean hasn’t done much work; Marco Corbetta and some others are working on it. Three people we’ll never see. We see the same people giving info all the time, but CIG is a team of over 300 people, just inside. Lots of times the people presenting things didn’t make it.

Lots of cool stuff they got working on the planets. They’ve shown physics on the planets. Lots of work on the gravity for planets this week. With Chris in Frankfurt, he’s been pushing a lot.

[FPS animations?] Depends on the animations. They’re always being updated. Locomotion sets are in, but there’s a big, behind the scenes push to change the animation pipeline. Changing the tools they use to export animations. Problem is they’ve got something like 3500 animations; ships, characters, anything that moves. So whenever they do a change, they have to support all the legacy assets. Requires lots of tools work.

As the pipeline improves it takes less time to create new animations.

They’ve been converting the FPS animations to a new pipeline. Steven is working today that there’s a ‘state’ for the ‘hunch’. When you walk under a ship they wanted a whole movement state. Most animations are split between a full body or an upper body animation, authored very differently. When you walk under a ship in hangar, your char. hunches over. Going from relaxed walk to relaxed hunch.

The motion set takes 96 assets or so. The hunch isn’t much different, so why’s it a completely different motion set, when it should be just an upper body additive? Just add one layer on the upper body that says hunch a bit. Saves lots of assets. The state still exists, but you’re just reusing the normal set with a slight alteration.

Fixing some grab animations. At some point someone put in a placeholder grab animation, which shows any time there’s a weapon picked up. Fixing that up today apparently.

John Carmack – ‘ making video games is harder than launching a rocket into space’

They’re talking about how game development is hard, and the entire goal of it is to make it easier.

The reason they went crowd funded so that they could have the time to make the game they want to.

Publishers will normally ask for ‘milestones’ that they want before you get any money, where you have to cut some quality to get money in the time that you have.

In traditional development, it’s a balance triangle between time, quality, and money.

That’s hwy most games cut features, why most games on market are ‘streamlined’.

CIG don’t have to cut features that aren’t hitting milestones, cause there’s no publisher to be beholden to.

People are asking Sean Tracy to have his own show, but he’s busy working. He has a game to make. That’s what the community team are for.

[Polaris? Any info?] No information yet. Even the name isn’t locked down. Disco can repair pools. They’ve had initial planning meetings on the Polaris on where they want to take it. Goal is to be the ship the Idris was originally announced at.

100-110 meters.

No concept yet, gonna start that kickoff on Tuesday or Wednesday. Design is working on an art brief on it. Chris has been talking about this a lot, cause he promised a Corvette early on. It’s a capital-sized ship. Probably the capital size combat ship.

The Reclaimer and Orion will likely have capital-size powerplants. And the Starfarer is close to Capital size as well. But the Polaris will be the smallest capital size combat ship

The Drake Buccanneer – No concrete specs on it right now, but take a look at the post on the forum for a few quick ideas on what they’re looking for the ship to be. The forum thread will be up for a few months while the ship awaits its turn in the ship queue

Remember – stream tomorrow at 1.

Ben will be on a video game collecting podcast Sunday, he’ll put details up on his twitter.

Erris is Canadian. He does some random things for Relay, no-one really knows what, but still they're stuck with him. He’s also written one Young Adult novel that he can’t stand, which can be found here.

A polite Canadian who takes pride in making other peoples day brighter. He enjoys waffles with Maplesyrup, making delicious puns and striving for perfection in screaming at the T.V. during hockey games.